{Spotlight Project} Monika Plays With The Vignette: Grunge Floral Strips...And Added A Christmas Twist!

Hi, everybody. It's Monika back again with some more inspiration for you. This week's spotlight post of mine is inspired by my friend Sandie, who loves her VIGNETTE: Grunge Floral Strips. It is such a versatile set and you may remember that I used it for my DT project for our Sketch #20 challenge, which is still in full swing.

I had made another card at the time which didn't follow the sketch. However, it tied in with my personal yearly challenge of making at least one Christmas card using non-Christmas stamps.

{Spotlight Project} Monika Creates a Layout with the Boxed Blooms

Hi, everybody. As promised some more inspiration for your fabulous Boxed Blooms and Bold Sentiments stamp set. I'm guessing that most of you have by now made it one of your faves.

Today, I'm working with the daffodil image. Well, one could say it's the wrong time of year, but it's never too late to catch up on some scrapbooking. And that's exactly what I've been up to.

To create this beauty you need:

- Stamps: Boxed Blooms and Bold Sentiments, Holiday Artsy, SENTIMENT BUILDERS: Celebrate,VIGNETTE: Celebrate Artsy, and Mini Mixed Media Backgrounds
- Inks: Black Memento, dye inks in brown, yellow, pink and blue
- Ink Markers: black, brown and dark yellow
- ProMarkers: tulip yellow, buttercup, gold, burnt orange, leaf green, pastel blue and blender
- Card stock: white sheet of 12x12" plus a piece of brown card for matting
- Tools: large soft brushes for blending inks (I used shaving brushes), craft knife, steel ruler and cutting mat plus colour spritzer/spray tool for use with markers
- Other: post-it notes for masking, sequins to add some sparkle

I started off by creating my masks for the daffodils and roughly deciding on the layout by placing my elements onto my 12x12" piece of card stock.

I then stamped the daffodils masking them off as I went along. With all three of them stamped and masked, I used my brushes to blend the inks (yellow, pink and blue) for the background.

I then stamped the large 'celebrate' (SB Celebrate) in brown followed by the splashes (Holiday Artsy) in yellow and pink before stamping the small 'celebrate' (Celebrate Artsy) in yellow, the word 'cherish' (Boxed Blooms) in brown and the smaller words (SB Celebrate) in black.

I then added a bit of background stamping (Mini Mixed Media) in pink and yellow. As I didn't want this to be dominant, I first stamped some ink off on a piece of scrap before stamping onto my scrapbook page. This type of generational stamping allows for a softer effect.

To finish off my stamping, I added a couple of brushstrokes (Celebrate Artsy) in pink to my bottom left daffodils, again using this type of generational stamping.

I then removed my masks and coloured my daffodils using my ProMarkers. I did this in a sketched style rather than focusing on perfect blending, which I think works well with this layout. I then cut around a couple of corners using my craft knife, added some splashes in brown and dark yellow and finished off by adding my matted photo and some sequins.

There is also a craft-along video which covers most of my decision making on the layout, masking and stamping in my usual casual style.


Hope you feel inspired to use your stamps in a different way.

Enjoy and Happy Stamping!!! :-)